I serve with player representatives from every team and with an Executive Committee of players who spend countless hours worrying about everything from critical business operations and necessary benefits and assistance for our players to the overall image and reputation of the league. While more people follow the game of basketball than follow the business of basketball, without question the NBA is a serious business, and one that wouldn’t exist without the commitment of our players. Alongside our partners in this endeavor — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and team owners — my fellow players and I accept and welcome our responsibilities for growing the game and enhancing the fan experience now, and for long after we’ve retired.

Working with our Acting Executive Director Ron Klempner, we’ve spent the past year reviewing and reforming the core policy infrastructure of our union, creating an organization that is strong, strategic, transparent and absolutely accountable to our players. Most notably, over the past many months, the NBPA’s Executive Committee has been engaged in an extensive process and exhaustive search for a new Executive Director to lead the day-to-day operations of the union. For your average fan, this may not sound so important, but for our players, it’s a big deal. Our next NBPA Executive Director will help define and shape the decisions that will govern the direction of the NBA in the decades ahead.

As ball players, we know a lot about recruiting, so in an effort to conduct a thorough and professional search, we partnered with outside consultants to identify over 200 professionals from the worlds of sports, law, labor and business who might be qualified to lead our union. Our Executive Committee has devoted the time, resources and energy necessary to narrow down this quality pool of potential candidates. During our All-Star Weekend Winter Meeting, we devoted virtually all of our time together to discussing the process that we’ve engaged in, and the procedures for considering and voting on our next Executive Director. We also heard from our leading candidates for the position to date, and players attending were able to take their measure.

I’ve been encouraged by the passionate interest in the outcome of these deliberations — player agents, corporate sponsors, team owners, sports journalists and NBA fans. And while some of these interests have been critical or skeptical of the very deliberate steps we’ve been taking in this process, it’s a testament to the commitment and passion we all have to protect our players and ultimately the game we all love so much. But make no mistake, the decision about our next Executive Director will be made by NBA players, in a process that has been and will continue to be open, transparent, painstaking and professional.

One of our greatest challenges as an organized group of players is managing the logistics that require us to be constantly moving throughout the country. However, we’re in the last stages of implementing a plan that will allow every player to consider the candidates, discuss their merits with teammates and fellow union members and very soon, vote on new leadership for the NBPA. The process has taken time, but we know it has been time well spent.

The NBAPA’s search for an executive director is taking an eternity, and the mysterious process has understandably frustrated players and their agents. Jeff Schwartz – the president of Excel Sports Management, who’s NBA clientele includes Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, Deron Williams, Paul Pierce, Tyson Chandler and Kemba Walker – loudly questioned the union’s tactics. Per ESPN:

As a longtime and ardent supporter of the National Basketball Players Association, I am deeply troubled by the clandestine process to date in the search for the union’s next executive director.

This is a critical hire for the players, who have been impacted so negatively by the most recent collective bargaining agreement. Salaries are down leaguewide, contracts are shorter and include less guaranteed money than they once did, and free-agent movement has been curtailed significantly at a time that NBA franchises are reaching record valuations. Leadership from the union’s next executive director is essential to the ability of current and future generations of NBA players to restore many of the critical benefits that were lost in the last round of negotiations. But here we are again witnessing a search marked by the sort of troubling secrecy that has been synonymous with the NBPA for years.

One of the most frequent complaints voiced by players and agents against the previous regime was the union’s obsession with secretive practices and compartmentalization. The expectation moving forward was that the NBPA would start to insist on transparency in everyday business operations and in the search for its next leader. The NBPA, however, has unbelievably yielded again to opaque methods in choosing the next union leader. This approach can no longer be tolerated.

The only way to repair the damage that has already been done, in my view, is to bring an immediate stop to the current process and then start the executive-director search over from scratch with a much broader approach.

Transparency in NBPA matters is essential for the healthy functioning of the union and for restoring the confidence and trust of players, agents and the public. Aside from a short meeting at All-Star Weekend in New Orleans — which only a small percentage of players attended — information on the search process has been withheld from anyone beyond the union’s nine-player executive committee and a handful of NBPA staffers. No one else has been provided information about who was considered for the position, what qualifications were sought from the candidates, and how those qualifications were valued. Aside from the executive committee, furthermore, no one else has been afforded the opportunity to meet with and/or screen any of the purported candidates.

Despite the fact that it was widely reported in the media during All-Star Weekend that there are two finalists for the position, their identities have yet to be publicly disclosed. I’ve also spoken personally with a number of qualified candidates who either dropped out of the search due to the cumbersome process or say they were ruled out of the search without explanation. This is far too important a decision to be made via such an uneven process.

At the moment, there’s no telling what Deron Williams (or his new representative at the negotiating table) wants as free agency looms, but this much is clear: his former adviser wants him playing in Texas. Per the Star-Telegram: “Unfortunately for the Dallas Mavericks, Brooklyn Nets point guard Deron Williams won’t be renegotiating his contract with his longtime agent, Tommy Thomas. Otherwise, Williams could be wearing a Mavericks uniform. Thomas was Williams’ high school coach at The Colony from 1999-02, has watched Williams mature into being one of the game’s best players and has been a major influence in his life for many years. Thomas also was Williams’ agent, via Houston-based McClaren Sports, when he became the third overall pick of the 2005 NBA Draft by the Utah Jazz. Williams becomes the NBA’s hottest free agent July 1, and Thomas said ‘I would love to see him’ sign with the Mavericks. However, Thomas’ contract with Williams ends June 30, and Williams’ new agent, Jeff Schwartz, will be handling negotiations with whichever team Williams decides to play. ‘We want him to make the best decision for him and his family, wherever that is and wherever God leads him,’ Thomas said Tuesday. ‘I told him the other day, ‘Hey, I let God do all the heavy lifting in my life, so you’ve just got to pray about it and then see what path God has for you and then be committed to wherever He takes you. That’s the advice I gave him a couple of Saturdays ago.’ Asked if he advised Williams not to go on live TV — a la LeBron James — to announce the decision about his basketball future, Thomas said: ‘That’s his new guy’s deal now. I’m out of that part. All I do is pray for him and wish him well.’ The Mavericks are hopeful that Williams, an All-Star the past three seasons, will return home and sign a long-term contract with them. So, too, is Thomas.”

With labor negotiations currently moving in the wrong direction, some highly-influential agents are pushing hard for the NBA players’ union to decertify. They seem to think it’s the only chance players have against the owners. From ESPN: “Arn Tellem, Bill Duffy, Mark Bartelstein, Jeff Schwartz and Dan Fegan — who collectively represent nearly one-third of the league’s players — spoke Monday about the process of decertifying the union, according to sources with knowledge of the situation. The agents’ view is that the owners currently have most, if not all, of the leverage in these talks and that something needs to be done to turn the tide. They believe decertification will do the trick, creating uncertainty and wresting control away from the owners. ‘The union has been negotiating with the league for a year and a half and the owners haven’t changed their stance, so the conversation the agents had was about how to work with the union to enhance its strategy,’ a person close to the situation said on condition of anonymity. ‘The feeling is that decertification is the weapon that has to be pulled out of the arsenal, that it’s the most effective way to change the dynamics of the negotiations.’ The agents have spoken with Billy Hunter, the executive director of the players association, about the need for decertification, but he has thus far resisted their plan. He said Tuesday that the players are not yet considering decertifying. ‘We’ve never really had any discussion about decertification,’ Hunter said after meeting with the owners. ‘As you’re aware, we’ve obviously been experiencing some pressure in the media from some of the agents about decertification. That’s not a message that has crossed our lips.’ Hunter believes he has his own weapon to change the tenor of the talks in the lawsuit the union filed with the National Labor Relations Board. The suit claims that the NBA is not negotiating in good faith. Hunter said he hopes there will be a ruling within the next few weeks. If the union wins its suit, the NLRB could declare the lockout illegal and end it, though the number of cases in which the NLRB has done that in the past decade is miniscule. Nevertheless, Hunter is not likely to consider decertification until getting the results of the suit.”